As Amanda puts it, “I never knew I needed to go to Croatia until I went to Croatia.” Dubrovnik is a perfect medieval city, still in its medieval construction, complete with a moat (now filled in, and part of it is the area highway) and bridge, stone walls that circumnavigate the city, buildings where you can reach out and touch your neighbor, monasteries, churches, town squares, and fountains all packed inside. Pictures made in the middle ages can still be used as accurate maps. For a fee you can go up on the walls and walk around the city, which we, unfortunately, did not have time to do. Although the modern Dubrovnik has grown up around the old city, they keep the character of the city, and are currently repairing some of the damage incurred during the turbulent breakup of the region in the 90’s. No cars are allowed inside the city, and even the over-sized delivery sleds need to be out by a certain time each morning, to minimize the impact. Inside is also a pharmacy that has been in operation since the 14th century, originally as part of Franciscan monastery, now as a modern pharmacy operation. We went early enough in the morning that we avoided a lot of the crowds, but still managed to do a little shopping (excellent ice cream on the main thoroughfare), and a fair amount of sightseeing, including the Dominican monastery and it’s Titian, and a _lot_ of cobblestone. The amount of stone makes modern cities look positively lush with vegetation, but I suppose when fire is one of the worst catastrophes that can befall you, and firefighting technologies aren’t advanced enough, stone is your friend.

You don't know your monks, Love. The pharmacy is out of the Franscican monestary and the Titian was in the dominican one. As far as I can recall there isn't a Cistercian one, but if there is we didn't go there.

We very studiously paper-blogged day one of our trip so we could remember it later for blogging. By day two, we were so saturated with information, love and pisco that we told the blog it could go hang and we'd write it from memory later. Should be exciting when I get to it! (We saw a lot of monks, too.)

Yes, we also took time every few days to journal, or diary, or log (what the hell is a plog?) our experiences. We have them all written down, and some day may post a full accounting to LJ. These little paragraphs are just some introductory material to accompany the photo and link to photo album, because I'm not really into beating readers over the head with context free photos. Of course, all our written notes are at home, and I'm posting and writing from work... isn't this why people switched to web logs in the first place?